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Sanford and His Love Interest, in E-Mail

If you haven’t gotten enough about Gov. Mark Sanford’s newly acknowledged indiscretions with an Argentinian paramour, The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., is now publishing e-mails between the two.

This incredibly detailed back-and-forth is sure to add fuel to the fire about whether the governor can survive his now admitted extramarital affair, let alone press ahead with a presidential run.

So far, the embarrassing disclosures suggest not. The State promises more tomorrow. How the newspaper obtained these missives is still unknown.

Here’s a short take from the e-mail exchanges. This is dated July of last year, to “Maria,”
from Mr. Sanford:

Two, mutual feelings …. You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light – but hey, that would be going into sexual details …

Three and finally, while all the things above are all too true – at the same time we are in a hopelessly – or as you put it impossible – or how about combine and simply say hopelessly impossible situation of love. How in the world this lightening strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure. As I have said to you before I certainly had a special feeling about you from the first time we met, but these feelings were contained and I genuinely enjoyed our special friendship and the comparing of all too many personal notes …

I love the letters. They don’t make me want to laugh at the man, though I continue to laugh at a Republican party that tells everyone else how to live and wastes billions of tax dollars, crying “socialist” at anyone who is in favor of the common good, common sense, and economic sanity.

Sanford seems like a human being imprisoned in a right-wing talking-points memo. Now that he’s outed himself, he can stop being such hypocrite. Welcome to the human race, governor. It’s better here.

(Where we need health care, a stimulus package, and the freedom to marry and divorce and reproduce as we see fit–because we are, like you, real, imperfect, vulnerable, and American.)

I mean, Governor Sanford, did you have to time it so poorly as to come out with it now? How am I supposed to follow what’s going on with Jon Gosselin. Will he get back together with Kate? Anyone who knows, please advise!!

Last I heard, Jon’s mistress might be appearing on the show. Sanford, I blame you if Jon & Kate plus Ei8ht is no longer a viable tv show because you bumped them off the headlines.

Thank God there will probably still be some journalists who will follow up with Jon & Kate and resist being distracted by Gov. Sanford’s insignificant “news story.”

Eeeewwww. I prefer to not think of Sanford in any sexual manner whatsoever. Gross.

No wonder he was so brain-jammed about accepting the stimulus. Only someone with that much sex on the brain could think seriously that SC’s crumbling schools and sub-standard roads, just to name two things, didn’t need federal stimulus money.

He writes beautiful letters any woman would be happy to receive. The problem is that he is married and the letters weren’t to his WIFE. Why couldn’t he be a big man and separate from his wife and file for divorce? Wouldn’t that have been more respectful of his family and the people of South Carolina.

This is a story that just keeps on giving! Its got it all. Hypocrisy, power, mysterious disappearances, tango and now EMAILS! In all honesty, I don’t mind his Latin romance at all. What I really hate is him doing it while spouting “traditional marriage”, family values and generally beating up on gays to gain political power. Plus, he has roundly condemned others who have strayed from their marriage to gain political power. Nice guy.

The press conference he gave was a nightmare of political self destruction and I challenge the GOP spin masters to save that. Fox did though. They labeled him as a Democrat in their feed. Very clever.

Would anyone else prefer that the letters remain private? I suspect that I share with many other NYT followers a disgust for the hypocrisy of evangelizing social conservatives who get caught in their own “sins.” The damage they do to others with their policies is considerable and any request for consideration or tolerance is a little tough to swallow.

But I actually think the damage is greater to us to have everything on full display. In a way it actually trivializes the consequences of his choice as a senior elected public official by focusing the attention on the scatology.

It doesn’t really serve a constructive purpose that I can see. Our imaginations can do a sufficient job on this one, and whether or not he is fit to continue to govern has nothing to do with the specific details of his lust or infatuation and the successful pursuit and execution of the same.

For some reason it makes me think of the Manny Ramirez story – he’s getting tons of press coverage and adoration in New Mexico right now and the story is now really about something other than what should be a fairly straightforward and sober (and brief) public discourse on steroid use and athletics. In both cases we’re trivializing important issues and making ourselves less serious and altogether weaker in the long run by creating and feeding circuses that surround the actual, important, event.

Publishing the letters is the only way to prevent Gov. Sanford from making up more lies. He did not seem repentant to me, not in the least. He just wants to be forgiven and put it behind him. First let’s understand what happened here, Governor. And what else there might be that we should know about you but don’t — at least not yet. Yes, publish the letters. Somehow you have to get through his skull that the truth about his conduct has a chance of winning out, which usually doesn’t happen with politicians. Publishing everything, otherwise he will try to brazen it out.

If you ask why Gov. Sanford couldn’t have been honest and had a divorce rather than keep a mistress on the side, his wife Jenny Sullivan Sanford is a strong woman from the Skil power tool company family and was the millionaire and Vice President of Wall Street firm Lazard Freres before marrying Sanford. He married wealth. I bet Mark Sanford wouldn’t want be disinherited from that fortune now. You know h

As to his being a Republican, I don’t think it matters much, and I hate to see people using to widen the divisions between the parties. We’ve seen sexual addiction and misbegotten love affairs thwart the ambitions of politicians from both parties—even as recently as the last presidential election.

Aw, c’mon Rancho, are you really mentally bankrupt enough to suggest that the present administration would need to divert attention from all that is going on in the world and in this country, and investigate some low-life adulterous “family values” governor? He seems totally capable of self-destructing without any interference from Democrats…

I haven’t the foggiest notion of goings-on in the Sanford marriage. But I do know marriage is a two-way street. I also know that there are rarely clear-cut villans and victims in a marriage. I also know that an affair is a symptom of a marriage gone awry–not the root cause itself.

I wish both the Sanfords the freedom to clearly assess their marriage in the light of day and decide whether it’s best to continue or to call it a day.

I wish them all the best!

It’s a shame that the political litmus test is a happy marriage. Most of us don’t fit the bill anyway.

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